In Gaza, grief and pain for slain ‘angel of mercy’ paramedic

from al Jazeera

Too worn out to shed more tears, Sabreen al-Najjar recalls the last time she saw her daughter alive.

“She stood up and smiled at me, saying she was heading out to the protest,” the 43-year-old told Al Jazeera from her home in Khuza’a, southern Gaza Strip.

That protest was the 10th Friday demonstration held by Palestinians since March 30 near the fence with Israel dubbed the Great March of Return. Sabreen’s daughter, 21-year-old Razan, had been in all of them, volunteering as a paramedic to help those shot by Israeli snipers.

“In a blink of an eye, she was out of door. I ran to the balcony to watch her outside but she had already made her way to the end of the street,” Sabreen said on Saturday, surrounded by grieving relatives, friends and female patients her daughter had once treated.

“She flew like a bird in front of me.”

At the protest site in Khuza’a, witnesses said that Razan approached the fence on Friday in her medic’s vest and with both of her arms raised to show the Israeli soldiers a 100 yards away that she posed no threat.

Her intention was to evacuate a wounded protester lying on the other side of the fence, after he had managed to cut a hole through it.

Instead, Razan was shot in her chest with live ammunition, the single bullet escaping through a hole in the back of her vest.

She became the 119th Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces since the popular protests began calling for the Palestinians’ right of return to the homes from which they were expelled from in 1948. More than 13,000 others have been wounded…

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